Not with a bang, but with a whimper....

So, Dad finished Firmin today. Fine book, but it left him feeling a little depressed. Not as depressed as when he read The Name of the Rose, but still a little down.

A werewolf, a vampire, and ghost share a flat.

No, it's not the beginning of a joke. It's the premise of a show Dad taped. Being Human is a show running on BBC America. Mom and Dad watched it and had a good time. It's kind of like Dark Shadows, with more humor and less self-serious goth. For some reason, it seems more interesting with the accents. The castmembers are appealing. Most of the ideas have been done before--vampire struggling against his vampire nature, werewolf having to deal with "that time of the month," ghost attached to the place it died--but not together, at least not well done together. Mom and Dad are looking forward to firing up the DVR and enjoying this funny/scary show. If you like to watch shows as they air, new episodes are on Saturdays at 9.

Sige the scaredy cat won't watch with them, but I will.

As long as the lights are on. With my paws covering my eyes.

Wonderfully creepy movie

Hello, everyone. Mom and Dad picked up Coraline (Two-Disc Collector's Edition w/ 3D) this week. They loved it in when they saw it at the movies and also liked the soundtrack. I cannot forget to mention the book which they both read after the movie.

It was as enjoyable as they remembered. The only disappointment was the 3D version. It came with four pairs of 3D glasses to watch the movie in, well, 3D. Dad wasn't expecting the nice specs that he had to wear when they saw the movie in 3D at the theater, but the 3D glasses that came with this DVD were green in the left eye and red for the right. Cheap! That's like something right out of the 1950s drive-ins. So when you saw the movie with these things on, the colors were totally washed out. Oh, well. Not that big a deal. They bought the movie because they enjoyed it, not for some gimmick.



Gee whiz. How many times can I say 3D in one paragraph?

Has It Been Six Movies Already?

Mom and Dad saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Friday night. It's a Harry Potter movie. It's generally going to be fun if you're a fan of the books and don't bring a mental checklist of what they left out. They had fun.

They would have had more fun if the people on the two sides of them didn't talk during the movie or text. The family on the left of Mom was having a conversation, and when she asked them not to talk, the dad asked, "Why?!" Why? I'll tell you why: 'cause you're in bleedin' theater and other people paid to see the movie, not hear you explain EVERYTHING that is happening to your daughter! The guy to the right of Dad texted during the movie, but at least put it away before Dad had a chance to ask him to put it away.

Literate rat?

Dad finished Hiroshima a couple of days ago. He would suggest it for anyone interested in history. Reading the stories of survivors of the first atomic bomb causes the reader to see them as people and not just casualty statistics.

He's now moved on to Firmin, the tale of a rat who can read set in Boston in the 1960s. The idea is a good one, but Dad has no real feel for the book just yet. That may be because he's only read it late at night when he's been tired.

The AL Continues Its Unbeaten Streak

Mom, Dad, and Uncle Cris watched the All-Star game tonight. The American League wins 4-3, running its unbeaten streak to 12-0-1. It was a well-played and well-pitched game. The difference was basically the reserve left fielders. Carl Crawford of the Tampa Bay Rays made a great catch, robbing Brad Hawpe of a homerun in the bottom of the seventh inning to keep the game tied at 3-3. On the other hand, in the top of the eighth, Justin Upton misplayed a very playable fly ball into a triple for Curtis Granderson who scored the game winning run on a sac fly.

Oh, and by the way, Dad thinks anyone who says it was a boring game probably suffers from ADD and is used to the ludicrously high scoring arcade style baseball of the steroid era.

A little bit of history for you

Good evening, everyone. Dad stopped reading Don't Know Much about Anything long ago. He was reading it as a review for his Jeopardy audition, which Zoe mentioned elsewhere, but the book wasn't all that great. He was so disappointed because he thought Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About...) was such a good book.

He's now reading Hiroshima by John Hersey. It's really good. Anyone who thinks it is a revisionist, America hating pro-Japan propaganda has either not read the book or has a few screws loose.

Hollywood!

This happened more than a month ago, but I really want to mention this. On June 11, I got to spend the day with Mom in Miami! It was so much fun! Dad had an audition for Jeopardy in Hollywood, Florida, and rather than leave me by myself for the entire day, they brought me along! I got to eat at Panera and walk along the beach.

If Dad appears on Jeopardy, will Mom and Dad bring me to California?